July is half over, and Earth is now seeing its annual shooting star season. That’s right, the Perseid meteor shower is fast approaching, which will reach its peak on the night of August 11, 2024.
of Perseid meteor shower A meteor is a small meteor that burns up in Earth’s atmosphere as Earth passes through the tail of Comet Swift-Tuttle. It is so named because the place in the sky where it appears to come from, the radiant point, is in the constellation Perseus. Meteors are familiar to us and pose no real danger, but the spectacle they put on is worth seeing at least once.
Swift Tuttle is a rather large mass of dust, ice and rock – its core is 16 miles (26 km) wide, making it twice the size of the object thought to have wiped out the dinosaurs, and it orbits the Sun every 133 years.
Like all comets, Swift-Tuttle leaves a trail of ice and rock in its wake, and while the last time it crossed Earth’s orbit in 1992 (the next encounter is in 2125), now Earth sees a shooting star spectacle every time it passes through that area.
Technically speaking, pieces of the comet are already falling into the atmosphere at speeds of up to 37 miles per second (59 kilometers per second), but they haven’t yet reached the densest part of the debris. As mentioned above, that will happen on August 11, and the nights before and after that will make for a pretty interesting show.
While you can currently see a few meteors per hour, there’s a growing chance that at its peak, hundreds of Perseids could burn up in the atmosphere. Unfortunately, the Perseids aren’t very bright, so to ensure you can see them in 2024, you’ll need to take a few extra steps.
Just like when you want to look at the stars, Perseid meteor shower It’s a very dark place with no artificial light pollution. Generally, this means traveling outside of the city, so you’ll want to make sure the skies are clear in the area you plan to visit.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) They warn that this year’s Perseid meteor shower will be affected by the fact that 53% of the time of the lunar cycle the Moon will be in waxing phase, meaning the brightness of this period between new and full moons will prevent viewing for much of the night. Luckily, the space agency says, “the Moon will have set by the time the Perseid meteor shower reaches its peak.”
As happens every year, Earth is expected to clear its trail of Swift-Tuttle debris in early September, meaning shooting stars could be visible even after the August peak.
